


i dreamed i held you in my arms

by leonshardt



Series: if it ain't broke, respawn it [2]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Recovery, malfunctioning respawn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 17:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1991193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonshardt/pseuds/leonshardt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soldier's awake, and everyone needs a little sunshine in their life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i dreamed i held you in my arms

**Author's Note:**

> takes place before "stardust to remember you by", same verse

 

  
_The other night dear, as I lay sleeping_   
_I dreamed I held you in my arms_   
_When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken_   
_So I hung my head and I cried_

\--You Are My Sunshine

 

 

 _i._  

The thing about dying is that you don’t even know you’re dead ‘till you’re alive again, and you don’t know just how much your life is worth ‘till you’re almost dead.

Soldier wakes up and he’s not dead, but he’s not much of anything else either.

“Medic,” he croaks, and he’s not sure why he says the word.

There’s an indistinct static shuffling around his head, like bees buzzing in his brain in place of a full-blown headache. His eyes could be open or they could be glued shut; either way, all he can see is blurry darkness.

There’s something soft under his head, like a pillow, but when he tries to roll over there’s a sudden, searing pain that shoots all the way down his spine. It’s like getting slapped in the face with lightning, and it hurts so goddamn bad that Soldier just groans and thinks, _Hey, now would be a great time to pass out_.

He closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

 

 

_ii._

When he wakes up again he’s still alive, and as an added bonus his eyes seem to be functioning again.

He stares up at the ceiling and blinks and blinks and stares some more, and after a while he realizes that he’s lying on a bed. There’s a rhythmic beeping somewhere to his left and the humming sound of a fan, and it all sounds vague and distant, like a recording of a recording.

Very slowly, Soldier turns his head. The tendons in his neck creak like springs, but there is no pain. Looking down, there’s a tangle of wires snaking down his neck and arms, disappearing beneath his shirt.

Through the fog in his mind, he notices that he is in a small hospital room. There’s a table next to the bed and beyond that there’s a door, and as Soldier watches it opens and a man in a lab coat steps in.

“Who’re you?” Soldier rasps, and the man looks up from his clipboard. “Ah,” he says. “You’re awake!”

“Who are you?” Soldier repeats, and the man in the lab coat beams.

“I am your doctor!” he says. “I will be taking care of you while you recover.  But the real question is: Who are _you_?”

“I’m…” Soldier says, and then his mind draws a blank, and no matter how hard he digs, he can’t even remember his own name. “Uh.”

“Well,” the doctor says, peering at him over the rim of his glasses. “It would seem that you have amnesia, too. No surprises there!” He places the clipboard down on the table by Soldier’s bed and gives him a reassuring smile. “I’m going to fetch you some water,” he says. “I will be right back!”

He leaves and the door shuts behind him, leaving Soldier alone once more. The clipboard is still on the bed stand, and if Soldier cranes his neck he can make out the first few lines of the chart. In the corner there’s slanted handwriting he can’t decipher, but written at the very top in large letters it says:

_“Patient Name: John Doe”_

And for some reason the name causes him to croak out a laugh, but the effort makes him dizzy so afterwards he tries to stay very still.

“What’s so funny?” the doctor asks, returning with a pitcher of water in one hand and a cup in the other. He sets the cup down and fills it halfway with water, holding it out for soldier to take.

Soldier smiles. “Hey, Doc,” he says, and tries to move his fingers. “It’s the… uh, I can’t feel my arms?”

“Also not surprising!” the doctor says, setting the pitcher down. “You’ve been in a coma for quite a while. You should get some rest.”

“Right,” Soldier says. Then: “Wait, what?”

“Get some rest,” the doctor says firmly, picking up the clipboard. “We can talk later.” He moves to the other side of the bed, where Soldier can’t see him.

Soldier wants to argue but the buzzing in his head is getting worse the longer he’s awake, and hardly anything the doctor says is making any sense to him anyway. There’s a tingling in his spine and his tongue feels thick in his mouth— his mind is pushing him to sleep.

“Ughhhh,” he mumbles, and then everything is dark once more.

 

 

_iii._

He dreams, and in his dream he’s sprinting under the hot sun with a rocket launcher in his hands, following the railroad tracks beneath his feet. He skids, rounds a corner, and another one, and when he turns there’s the familiar shape of a man standing with his back turned to him. He’s hitting something with a wrench in one hand, while clutching his yellow helmet to his head with the other.

“Hey,” Soldier calls out, but his voice is drowned out by a sudden overhead explosion that causes both of them to stumble.

“Hey!” he says, more sharply, scrambling to his feet, and the other man turns to face him. He’s saying something, but whatever it is gets lost in the cacophony of the explosions. Soldier can make out the word _Help_ , before the other man turns heel and starts to run. Bits of rubble are starting to fall around them and the walls are starting to cave in, so Soldier runs after him, staggering, tripping over his own feet. There’s a rocket launcher in his hands, and then there’s a shovel, and then a briefcase, and he drops them all one by one. They’d only slow him down, and the only thing he needs _right now_ is to catch up the running man, to find him and save him from what’s coming.

He already knows that he won’t get far.

 

 

_iv._

The next time the doctor returns, Soldier turns to him and says:

“I remember you. You’re Medic.”

Medic looks up, surprised. “What else do you remember?” he says.

 _Not much_ , Soldier thinks, but out loud he says, “There was a war, and I am a soldier.”

There is a long silence, and then Medic cracks into a wide grin and says, “Welcome back, Soldier.”

It gets easier to remember, after that.

“What happened to the others?” Soldier asks, and Medic taps his chin thoughtfully.

“Most of them are out searching for Sniper,” he says. “After respawn malfunctioned, we’ve had to do things the slow way. Heavy and I are staying back to look after the patients.”

“What about--” Soldier says, and wracks his brains for the words. “Engineer,” he says finally. “I was supposed to be looking for him.”

Medic sighs and rubs his forehead. “Soldier,” he says carefully. “Engineer was already dead when the respawn system broke, so we cannot be sure how extensive the damage to his body was. Honestly, I don’t think now is the best time to be--”

“ _Is he alive_ ,” Soldier demands, desperation edging into his voice.

“He’s alive,” Medic assures him. “But he is not recovering as fast as you are, Soldier. I still don’t know if the damage is permanent--”

“Take me to him, doc,” Soldier says, but Medic shakes his head.

“He’s not fully awake,” Medic says, “And besides, you can’t even move your limbs yet.”

 _That’s not true_ , Soldier thinks. He can wiggle his pointer finger a little, and slowly but surely the feeling is coming back into his hands.

Medic sighs, seeing the stubborn expression on his face. “Look to your left,” he says, and Soldier cranes his neck. There’s some sort of beeping monitor above him, attached below to a large machine of complicated tubing that connects to the wires snaking down his arm. There are flashing numbers on the monitor, vital signs probably, and the whole thing hums like a generator.

“What is it?” Soldier asks.

“A machine I put together myself!” Medic says. “Incidentally, it is also what’s keeping you from flatlining as your heart explodes.”

Soldier furrows his eyebrows, and Medic quickly adds, “Please don’t try to take out the wires in your arms, or I’ll have to ask Heavy to clean up your remains again.”

“Again?”

“You probably don’t remember! Constructing the device took some trial and error, but luckily Respawn was working just enough to freshen up your corpse every time I failed.” Medic adjusts his glasses. “It’s still rather crude, though. I had to salvage a few medigun prototypes to build it.”

Soldier blinks. “Doc, are you saying that I’ll die if I’m disconnected from this machine?”

“Probably!” Medic says cheerfully. “So it’s for the best that you stay in bed for just a while longer while I sort everything out.”

“But,” Soldier says helplessly. “But what about Engineer?”

“Please, Soldier,” Medic says. “Try to get some rest. I’ll keep you updated on his condition, if there’s any change in the future.”

Medic leaves, and Soldier is alone once more.

 

 

_v._

He stops dreaming about running from explosions and starts dreaming about something else; fragments of a song, half-remembered words, the quiet plucking of guitar strings. He wakes up wistful, yearning for something forgotten.

A week passes and Soldier stays in bed, trying to move his limbs, trying to remember. At first he can only wiggle one finger, then two, then all of them one by one. It’s a struggle to force his hands to move like they used to, but he keeps trying and trying until sweat beads down his forehead and he gasps for breath.

Another week passes and he can finally clench his hands into fists, tracing up the sides of his arms where the IV wires nestle into the inner crooks of his elbows. He wonders if he’d really die if he pulled them out.

 

(It doesn’t matter, because his heart hurts enough as it is.)

 

The door opens and when Soldier looks up, it’s Heavy who stands in the doorway this time, carrying a plate of sandwiches like an offering.

“Doktor is busy right now,” Heavy says. “Would you like sandvich?”

Soldier silently takes one and bites into it, chewing without really tasting. He swallows, turns to Heavy and says, “There’s a song stuck in my head.”

“Da,” Heavy says, pulling the blinds up from the window. “Happens to Heavy, too.”

It’s raining outside, rivulets of water running against the glass in streams. Soldier ruminates while watching the raindrops patter against the window, turning the melody over in his head.

“This one’s important,” Soldier says. “It’s starts with… ‘You are’… ‘You are my’…”

“--Perhaps you should ask Doktor,” Heavy says. “Is Soldier feeling any better?”

“Yes,” Soldier says. “Tell me about how Engineer is doing.”

“Little man is awake,” Heavy says. “But he will not talk to Heavy, or Doktor, or anyone. He sits in room and plays guitar.”

Soldier drops his sandvich on his plate and says, “Can I see him?”

“Maybe when you are both strong again, Heavy will take you in wheelchair to see little man,” Heavy says gently.

Soldier slumps down against his pillows.

“Maybe.”

 

 

_vi._

It rains for weeks, and every time Medic pulls back the blinds the skies are always grey.

“Miss Pauling is leading the search for Sniper,” he tells Soldier. “They haven’t found him yet. Spy’s run off alone to Europe, and I think we’ll have to give up soon--”

Soldier nods, but he isn’t really listening. There’s a faint melody drifting from the open door, hauntingly familiar, and Soldier knows it’s somehow important. It has something to do with what he was trying to tell Heavy, but the words keep slipping through the cracks of his mind like sand.

“—and it’s still unclear right now, but—“

“Medic,” Soldier says. “What’s that song?”

“What song?” Medic says, confused.

“It’s coming from…” Soldier jerks his head towards the open door, and Medic scratches his head.

“Oh. It’s probably just Engineer,” he says. “I don’t think he has control over his speech yet, but he remembers how to read music.”

“Can I—“

“ _No_ ,” Medic says firmly. Then he sighs, seeing the look on Soldier’s face. “ Look, I do not like keeping you here any more than you do. But maybe you can go next week, when I take you off the machine. There is at least a twenty percent chance that your modified heart will severely malfunction if we try right now.

Please,” Medic continues. “Just wait a little longer.”

 

 

_vii._

Soldier has never been very good at waiting.

 

 

_viii._

That night, Soldier lies in the dark, listening to the hum of the machine over the patter of raindrops on the window. He fingers the IV taped to the inside of his arm, thinking hard about what Medic said.

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter to Soldier. He’s died before, and he’s never gotten medals in the army for following orders anyway.

He grips the wires in one hand, and counts under his breath.

“One… Two…”

On _three_ he rips the wires out of his arm in one fluid motion, and squeezes his eyes shut. After a second, it becomes clear that his heart did not, in fact, explode.

“Huh,” he says. “Thanks, Doc.”

The lower half of his legs are still numb, so he half rolls, half drags himself out of the bed. He drops onto the cold tile floor, and pushes himself onto his elbows. It takes a moment for him to crawl over to the foot of the bed, where there’s a hospital-issue wheelchair waiting for him.

He hefts himself up, careful not to tip over. Then very cautiously he propels himself over to the door, listening hard for footsteps. He opens the door a crack and peers out, but the hallway outside is dark and empty. There’s a number on his door says _2_ as he rolls into the hallway, and further down there are more closed doors on either side, all neatly labeled with numbers.

As he continues down the hallway, he imagines that the walls are falling down, crumbling in a shower of plaster and dust. He blinks and the hallway is still intact, but the feeling of urgency remains.

He rolls to a stop in front of the door labeled _6_. There’s a sliver of light spilling out from the crack under the door, and when Soldier presses his ears against the wood, he can hear the soft strumming of a guitar.

His heart skips a beat, and then picks up again twice as fast, thudding heavily in his ears. Engineer’s on the other side of that door, he’s sure of it, and he’s alive, but what if he doesn’t recognize him?

 _He has to,_ Soldier thinks. _Because it’s the same song, the one I’ve been trying to remember. And it sounds like… home._

He takes a deep breath, and knocks on the door.

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for [cheerleading](http://leonshardt.tumblr.com/post/92345154675/i-feel-like-this-is-the-correct-way-to-write-tf2)


End file.
